


Any Very Talented Person

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: F/M, Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:20:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vila's talents are needed as part of the mission to destroy the priceless icon of Our Lady of Roovyera.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Any Very Talented Person

1\. MORNING HAS BROKEN

"Good morning, love," Blake said, putting the teacup down on the nightstand. He was already fully dressed, so he started pottering around his cabin, engaged in a hopeless rearguard action to straighten up the desk.

He restricted himself to a brief embrace and a tender kiss on the cheek. It took only one "Blake, can we do this when I'm conscious and your survival probability is higher?" to discourage him from anything more ambitious first thing in the morning.

The pillow was retracted millimeter by millimeter from the head huddled under it, as Avon (like a fiend hid in a cloud) began the hopeless rearguard action of waking up. It was amazing, he thought, just how much difference the sacrifice of half an hour or so of sleep could make to his mood. But he made the effort to conceal exactly how much he would have preferred a double espresso, in his own cabin, subsequently. Or even no caffeine, but subsequently. And especially in his own bed.

Oh, Christ on a crutch. Blake was singing under his breath again. It was not that Avon deemed Blake to have a displeasing voice. He had a very nice voice.

But morning had of course not broken, they were in the middle of space. It was mere convention that set the ship time. It was just one more terrible aspect of a malevolent fate that Avon had to wake up at 0700 ship hours after falling asleep somewhere in the area between 0227 and 0314 ship hours.

And as for the blackbird, first, last, and all in between, Avon would advocate piling them all up and applying a blowtorch to the lot. And he wouldn't piss on them.

But no, he thought. I have been transformed by love. I am a changed man. Of course I would piss on them. After they were well alight. "Hullo, Blake," he said. "What are we doing today?"

"We're going to Roovyera," Blake said. "For a spot of iconoclasm. You'll like that."

2\. SABOTEUR

"Put it on screen," Blake said.

Zen complied with a picture of an exquisite enameled icon, depicting a lapis-robed Madonna trampling a serpent underfoot. Seven stars shone in the gold-leafed background. The seven stars were flawless diamonds. The serpent's body was gilded and paved with sapphire and ruby chips. The frame assembled eight rows of   
gems, each of considerable size.

"This--well, picture, statue, icon, what have you--is considered the national symbol of Roovyera. Her patronage was considered essential to preserving Roovyera's status as an independent planet. Now that Roovyera's decided to go over to the Federation, she's no longer a religious symbol for a cathedral--and in any event they've turned their one-time cathedral into a conference hall--but an artwork for a museum. Roovyera's not much of a player politically, so they're not sending Servalan--worse luck!--just some bureaucrat or other for the handover. Well, we can't stop them from throwing their lot in with the Federation. But it will be one in the eye for the Federation when they get there and discover that there isn't any more Our Lady of Roovyera for them to get. Because we'll have blown it up."

"Blown it up? We can't do that," Vila said. "I've got a weak chest..."

"Weak head!" came the chorus.

"Yeh, exactly. It starts hurting when we stand about in cellars after we've planted charges on the ground floor...and the roof falls in on us."

Gan studied the floor between his shoes. "I don't like to contradict you, you know that I don't. But I don't think it's right for us to destroy something that means a lot to a lot of people. Or even that means that much to a few people."

"Blake, she's so lovely," Cally said. "How can we destroy anything so beautiful? I could never create anything like that, in a million years."

"Even the break-up value must be in the millions of credits for those stones," Avon said. "And the rarity value of an artwork like that...Jenna, you must know a chap who knows a chap, don't you?"

"Avon's right--this time," Jenna said. "The Federation will be every bit as upset about losing this little symbol if we have it--or if we have the sale proceeds--as if we blow it up."

Aaaah, fuck and a half, Blake thought. What's the point of discussing anything if all I get out of it is a load of aggro? But a promise is a promise. Indeed it might be argued that Blake came out ahead in the bargain: because Avon slept every night in his bed, in his arms (ambivalently wishing to be somewhere else), and new missions--to be doled out or democratically discussed--came along only every few weeks or months.

3\. THE BIRDS  
The pigeons and doves flew up, in a sudden clattering cloud of wings and coos like a reverse bombardment as they teleported down. Blake, Jenna, Avon, and Vila alit on gray cobblestones, in the center of the square, which was fringed with lemon trees.

Some of the old men sipping ristretti at the café tables looked up. Then they returned to their newspapers and games of dominos. Tourists. They come and they go. It's the reliable sunshine and the low exchange rate.

I keep saying that someplace is supposed to be Paradise, Vila thought. But--crikey, just look at this! Vita particles be blowed. No space suits. Not only can we breathe the air, it smells delicious. Flowery and herby and a little sharp, like that stuff you put in linens and a little salty so we must be near the sea. We don't need thermal suits. In fact, I'm sweating a bit in this anorak. The sunlight's pouring down like they ordered too much of it and they're dying to get rid of it before it goes off.

"Blake, look," he whispered. "All of the blokes are carrying handbags." (This was not strictly accurate--they had bags slung over their shoulders on straps.) "Do you think that means they're all--" (remembering who he was talking to, he modified what he was about to say) "--brave inheritors of the Theban bands?" If they are, the girls around here won't half be glad to see me. That is, unless they all are too. You never can tell, dropping down on a strange planet.

"I don't think so," Jenna said. "I think it's just because their trousers are so tight that they can't have any pockets." Avon tore his glance away from the promenade of close-covered legs and arses, and conscientiously began to survey the more monumental works of man that defined the square.

The quondam Cathedral, built of a violently colored red-brown marble that made it look like a gigantic loaf of brawn, loomed. The two-storey marble saints had been hauled out from between barley-sugar pillars in the niches in the façade. They were replaced by equally monumental statutes of past Federation presidents, at least the ones whom it was not a misdemeanor to recall. (Some sleeping killed...all murdered.)

In the center of the square--near enough to the crew members to sprinkle them--was a gigantic, noisy fountain. Four bronze dolphins and four bronze dragons forever squirted water back into the basin. Centered in the basin was an enormous marble Poseidon, with a trident in one hand, the other hand slung on his hip to hold up the protruding end of his marble loincloth.

A pretty gamine, with dark curls clipped short around her heart-shaped face, zipped past on a motorbike. She wore a boat-necked striped blouse with a bow perched on each shoulder, tight orange trousers that ended mid-calf, and espadrilles. Vila caught her eye and she smiled and waved at him.

"It's killing me how bloody marvelous this is," Vila said. "Blake, can't we call off the--you know--and just stay here for a holiday?"

"No, we can't. I must say I do like the look of the place, though."

"I like the look of anyplace that isn't covered with ice, or boiling hot, or stacked up in man-eating plants, or dripping with flesh-ripping wolverines, or pounding out meteor showers..."

"If those are the criteria, I'm overcome with admiration. But if we restrict the comparison to civilization, then this place is an absolute eyesore," Avon said.

"Of course you don't like it," Jenna said. "Too emotional for you."

4\. STRATEGISTS

There was an uncomfortable air about the hotel, so it was lucky that they didn't have to stay there more than the one night. The place was desolate, miles from anywhere, looming up high on a hill. The architecture didn't seem at all consonant with the rest of the town, either--mansard roofs? clapboard? Honestly.

And those puny stall showers where they expected opulent cast-iron tubs! And the décor! Vila certainly considered stuffing birds a worthwhile hobby, but not to the extent that dead raptors were involved.

Furthermore, although none of them could really dispute the truth of the words, "We all go a little mad sometimes" didn't seem like a very effective advertising slogan. Despite Blake's glare, Avon picked up a handful of matchbooks, and put them in his pocket, jostling the ones marked "R.O.T." You never knew when you'd need to be able to start a fire.

Jenna had spent the day looking up a friend of a friend of an ally of a third cousin of a free trader she used to know. It was diplomatic, delicate work, and couldn't be pushed too far. Teaser trailers for major felonies are to be avoided.

Vila had spent the day casing the nondescript Federation embassy where the icon had been transferred for safekeeping until the ceremony three days later. After a day spent working on the patch circuits for remote contact between hand communicators and Zen and Orac, Blake and Avon felt ready for a short break.

"Yours is better," Avon said, taking a bite out of Blake's cornet of gelato. (But then he usually ended up thinking that whatever his companion had ordered was better.) Blake had to agree. For a moment they stood, their arms crossed like Ben Hur and Messala drinking a toast, a dark sleeve holding a scoop of chocolate-chip-studded vanilla entwined with a white sleeve (hazelnut).

"Do you want to swap?" Blake asked insincerely.

"No, just let me have one more lick where your mouth touched it," Avon said. Cheap thrills, he thought--that's what we've missing! "I'll know better next time." I should have ordered the fraises des bois instead. We hardly ever get those.

They stood at the edge of the square at twilight, not quite daring to join the promenade. Some of the men taking their evening walk walked arm in arm, but that was probably because they weren't lovers. There was no one to ask. It wasn't the kind of information that Zen tended to accumulate.

They'd never be back, of course. Either the mission would fail, which created a heavy risk that at least some of them would never be anywhere. Or else it would succeed. And they wouldn't be terribly welcome once word got out.

Their bracelets crackled. "Blake? Jenna here. I've got us a house. It turned out that our contact is an estate agent, among other kinds of ponce. I rented the place for the month, not that we'll need it that long of course. Everything's stunningly cheap around here, they wouldn't be in bed with the Federation if all of them weren't dead broke. They call it a Palazzo. It surely has seen better days, but it's only a couple of kliks from the target, it's got three bedrooms and a safe, so that's all the comforts of home that we really need."

She gave them directions and broke the contact. Blake set out resolutely, hoping that he had the sequence correct for turning left at the Viale Whoozis, past the church of Santa Thingummy. He was temperamentally disinclined to ask for directions (particularly among those to whom Standard was a second or third or even fourth language), and knew he'd never hear the end of it if he got them lost. He paused for a moment. A small figure in a shiny red raincoat darted by, just visible at the corner of his eye. "North," he said.

"Northwest," Avon said.

5\. GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS

The humble tavern near the waterfront had an endless supply of jailbait red wine, fresh fish, big round loaves of sourdough bread, broad beans, garlic, and olive oil. There was a smaller amount of grilled and stewed meat that had been halted in its drive to become mountain goats. Kid, interrupted?

Although a few grumbles were voiced about tricked-up foreign messes (and Blake wondered, Lady Macbeth-like, if there was enough dentifrice on the planet to outweigh the amount of garlic Avon was getting through), the crew nonetheless voted the meal relatively acceptable. (Despite, or because, of their debt of gratitude, Blake and Avon never ate uncooked shellfish anymore.) It was a working dinner: they were trying to decide how far to trust their potential fence.

Giovanni Ghirlandaio (Vanni, to his innumerable friends) did not have a consistent income stream. In his numerous lines of work (ranging from the dubious to the ultra-dodgy; some of them were family businesses), feasts alternated with famines, and his various turf accountants tended to turn up just as feasts were being dished out. So he was more than glad to chat with a rebel group with an imminent plan to steal something for which he was sure he could find a willing buyer safely off-planet.

There was, of course, a meaningful risk that he would find the price on their heads more attractive than the nominal deal; that he would try to do both, in order; that he would be less than candid about the price he could obtain; and many other hazards of the long and fertile relationship between crime and politics. So the crew members were vigilant, and clanked slightly from their variety of handy concealed weapons.

Jenna's contact, Henry Linville, who had reasons of his own--which his few friends were too tactful to inquire about--for not returning to Earth, said that Vanni was just the man for discreet off-planet disposal of artworks lacking a provenance, at the best available rates.

Linville, as an utterly heterosexual male, provided contact information but failed to mention Giovanni's most notable characteristic: he was an absolute knockout. Giovanni was twenty-four or so, an inch or two under six feet, with wide shoulders, a tiny waist, and no hips to speak of.

Viewed from the front, he gave you the benefit of a beautiful, symmetrical face from the School of Botticelli. On any other face, the finely-cut top lip and thrust-out rectangular lower lip would be the best features. But really, they were outclassed by Giovanni's purple eyes, silvered down like candied violets.

The crucifix visible in a nest of soft dark hair, above the last closed button of his transparentish white shirt, at least hinted that he was less than a Federation stalwart. Those who noticed such things would check out the not-bad-at-all package. The rear view offered comparatively modest advantages: an appreciation of just how long his legs were, and how his quite perfect gluteal muscles tensed and released at each step, and hovered in repose.

Vila didn't notice. Jenna tried not to. Blake and Avon pretended not to.

Vanni poured the last of the fourth bottle of red wine into Avon's glass (where the residual mineral water turned it pink) and gestured at the two ounces or so of wine still in Blake's glass. "This is what we do at dessert, to use up the last of the wine." He prodded gently at the four white peaches in the bowl at the center of the table, and cradled the ripest one in his palm.

Then he picked up one of the butter knives, and rubbed the back of the knife, lingeringly, all over the skin of the peach. He passed his hand over the peach skin (like the hand passes in one of Vila's magic tricks), and it all peeled away at once, exposing the moist creamy flesh. He sliced into the peach, revealing that every piece had a flagrantly rosy center, near the pit. He dropped a few pieces of fruit into Blake's glass, cutting his eyes over at Avon, and repeated the gesture in the complementary direction. Vila and Jenna, feeling ignored, piled their plates with apricots and cherries.

"Charming," Avon said. "_What_ a pity that you haven't the resources to show us how to make zabaglione."

"Ah, here she comes," Vanni said. "My so-tardy little sister, Simonetta." Vila's heart gave a painful squeeze. She was the girl on the motorbike. She picked up the fingertips of his right hand with her own tiny hand. "I am so glad we meet again," she said. "But somehow, I knew it would happen."

"Vila," Blake said. "Why don't you go to the market tomorrow and get us some supplies? Perhaps Miss Ghirlandaio would be willing to show you the way."

6\. REAR WINDOW  
"Do you think we could get him to...well, join us?" Blake asked, fastening his top pajama button.

"I wouldn't be surprised, but engaging in troilism with a serious partner," (with a jealous boyfriend, Avon thought) "...well, it's the second-stupidest idea I've ever heard of."

"What's the first?"

"Invading Russia in the wintertime."

"That had a rather broader impact. But what's so stupid about it?"

"You think it would be exciting to see me with someone else. Well, you can rely on me that you wouldn't enjoy it a bit." And I'm not quite sure I'm ready for invidious comparisons with someone who makes me look like a slightly mouldy damp duster. Oh, why don't you just go off and have a knee-trembler or so with the boy? I'm sure the ammunition would come in handy, sooner or later.

"Oh, I think I might enjoy it at least a bit," Blake said. "Shift over, I'm falling off the edge." He put his right hand behind Avon's head and lightly stroked his lover's collarbone with his left. "He is awfully handsome, isn't he? And those trousers of his! Either he's got a nice bit of sausage between his legs or his old Mum knitted him a couple of pairs of argyle socks and he's susceptible to drafts."

"What would you do, if...?" Avon asked, resting his head against the pajama pocket, reassured as always (and as he would never admit) by the heartbeat beneath.

"If he's as supple as he looks," Blake began, and they each spent a second rather wishing they were twenty-five again, "And if we had the space, I suppose I'd push him down on the bed and fuck him senseless while I was watching him suck you off. The only thing I don't like about doing that to you myself is that I don't get much chance to watch your face. And what would you do? Don't try to tell me you're so noble that you didn't even notice that little beauty drifting past your view."

Avon slipped a hand beneath the pajama jacket, and began to stroke the small of Blake's back. "What a remarkable instance of synchronicity," he said. "Other than that I was contemplating getting right up that tasty tight little arse myself and watching you. But that wouldn't be fair to you--having to suffer through an ineptly performed imported blow job when the home product is so greatly superior. So I suppose Vanni and I might let you watch--or make you watch--and when I'd done with him, then I'd get right between your legs and finish you off and show the lad how it's done."

Mmm. Perhaps set up that chair, right over there. Tie your hands behind your back so you can't touch yourself, keep you fully clothed, all you can do is watch our two naked bodies and listen. As you get harder and harder and clench your teeth not to groan, until the two of us are sated and at the last I very slowly show you mercy.

And as for Vanni, if he gets bored with pure spectatorship, then he can bend forward and kiss you. You'd get the benefit of that lower lip like a heated swimming pool. That would give him one hand to rest on my shoulder to steady himself, and the other one--well, let us assume that by the dispensation of youth, he would be stiff again. And if I've ripped your shirt open, on the way to giving myself access to suck you, then he can shoot in a jet all over that smooth ivory skin and kiss it clean. That should send you right over the edge as I drink you down.

The ensuing hard kiss was contrapuntal, as they each thought, I would, then you would, then he would, and as they each felt, Now I am. And next you will.

"But you would fuck him?" Blake asked. "Not would you, I believe you when you've said you wouldn't, but fuck him if you would?"

"Oh yes."

"I didn't think that--we've never."

"I had noticed."

"I assumed that--you never said."

"I was afraid we'd quarrel."

"Doesn't it hurt?"

"Give me credit for some degree of subtlety." (Did you think you were hurting me? Or did you think I was some lesser class of humanity? Oh, God, let's not argue. Not now.)

"Often, more subtlety than I can stand... What does it feel like?"

"Well, because it's you," (he had tried and discarded the wording "when it's you") "it excites me to know that my lover's body is all the way inside mine, that we're joined so completely in that complex way. In general, as for the sensation itself, that part of the body is plentifully supplied with nerve endings. It feels like--well, if I can be fanciful--like a shower of silver-plated electrons surging through me and along my spine."

"Well...." Blake said.

"You might not like it," Avon felt impelled to say. "Not everyone does, even with the best will in the world."

"Want to try?"

"I'll get you a glass of wine," Avon said, finding his dressing gown. "And there are a few other relaxation techniques I can think of." Excitement sang in his head as he padded down the corridor to the salon (where the liquor cabinet--as well as the safe--was). I wonder if he's ever done this before? If he hasn't, or he has but doesn't know, then in a sense I'm about to take his virginity.

Contemptible, he thought, for that to be so arousing. But it is. Dammit, he thought, I'll be gentle even if it kills me. Plenty of time later (unless there won't be...) to step up the pace once Blake has had a bit of practice (...has been broken in the way I like it...)

In the abstract he wanted all forms of pleasure to be equal, and for pleasure to be equal for all parties to an erotic transaction. But the part of his body that aspired toward the concrete didn't entirely agree. That disproportionately influential special interest group was agoraphobic, imposing clamorous demands to be ensconced in a small, dark, enclosed place. (Imprison me, or I shall ne'er be free, Or ever chaste unless Thou ravish me.)

Avon poured wine from what he hoped was the last fiasco of the evening, filling the tumbler almost to brimming. He bent down and swallowed enough to make it possible to carry the glass. He walked back to their room, sipping reflexively. The staircase, its marble worn down in the middle, seemed to stretch for a mile. The corridors suddenly seemed to multiply into an endless number of shadowy rooms that weren't there before, huddling between him and his antagonistically beloved partner.

On his return, Blake raised an eyebrow, but made no comment. He drank from the half-full tumbler as Avon shed his dressing gown and returned to the wide, soft brass bed that sagged in the middle.

"I love you so much that I'm willing to submit to you," Blake said. Avon started to say that it wasn't about that at all, but it was and it wasn't, and anyway it was a touchingly sweet thing to say, so he kissed Blake's mouth and continued kissing him elsewhere.

After a few minutes of oral attentions plainly scripted as a 14-part serial, Blake said the wrong (or at least the counterproductive) thing: "Oh, just get on with it, man," which kept him stretched on the rack for an additional five minutes.

Eventually, however, Avon did concede him an orgasm, and amid the hurlyburly Blake vaguely noticed something pleasant going on at the margin, involving fingertips and a flagrantly moist oceanic-smelling product from the local apothecary. All his senses were enveloped in a crimson haze, highly conducive to the purchase of swamp land on uncharted planets.

Now, Avon thought. The interim is mine. "Turn on your side," he murmured. Dizzy with symbolism, he restricted himself to the minimum that could be considered penetration, and moved just as little as was consistent with thrusting at all. He partially stifled a groan against Blake's shoulder blade, found one of Blake's nipples to stroke, and was fair-minded enough to subject himself to the same agony of incompletion that he dished out to everyone else.

Blake, emerging from a nimbus of afterglow, said "Mmmm" and moved against him a little. Avon pushed a handful of curls off the back of Blake's neck, and kissed vertebra by vertebra. When he couldn't stand to delay any more, he withdrew, pushed Blake down underneath him, forced Blake's legs together with his own, and thrust hard between Blake's thighs until the landscape inside his head slid through Expressionism to Cubism.

"That's not what I thought it would be like," Blake said. "You didn't--just, well, take what you wanted."

Oh, thank you for believing after all this time that I care nothing for you. "That would hardly be functional," Avon said with careful neutrality. "If I plan to repeat a behavior, I had best not render it distasteful to my collaborator."

7\. THE 39 STEPS

The barber shop was paneled in mahogany, and there were Vilas upon Vilas reflected in parallel mirrors with etched borders. Vila got a shave and scalp and neck massage. The gigantic straight razor caused him a moment's unease, but the piles of lavender-scented hot towels soothed him down again. He had his hair trimmed, and blushingly acceded to the suggestion of Something for the Weekend.

The market proved to be a mile or so from the central plaza, near the docks. The market began at the water's edge, with stalls that took the buckets of flapping fish from the smelly small boats, and modulated down steepish stone terraces through stalls stacked with courgettes and chard, butcher shops on the second level, and stalls piled with lemons and grapes, to the bakers lower down.

"Don't bother to get more bread than you need for today," Simonetta said. "By tomorrow, it will turn to stone as if a Gorgon had looked on it."

"You lot go shopping every day then?" Vila asked. "My Mum used to do that too, mostly because the money came in in dribs and drabs and went out in floods. Never had anything nice as this on the stalls though. Murpheys and sprouts and carrots, apples, sometimes. And there was always a bloke selling patent whatzits for peeling 'em. Mum always bought them and they always broke. She never learned for the next time though. Have you got any more brothers and sisters besides Vanni?"

"A sister. She's much older than we are, she is married and lives far away from here."

"I've got six," Vila said. "All of 'em older than me except Juniper and Lil. You can say what you like about the Liberator, it's a treat to have my own room. Except that I get lonely sometimes, at night."

"Perhaps I can help with that," Simonetta said.

Distracted by the colors and scents (not least the lily of the valley emanating from Simonetta's neck), Vila assembled a very odd collection of items. Everything fit into the panniers of Simonetta's motorbike; Vila noticed that they were new and shiny, large enough to carry his entire tool kit. He felt a little funny about climbing on behind Simonetta, although he had no hesitation at all about embracing her, or resting his head on her shoulder.

"Would you like to drive?" she said.

"Well, I'm the bloke, you see. With the two little reservations that I don't know what to do with that thing and I don't know how to get back to our place from here."

"It's very simple," Simonetta said, showing him how to start and stop the bike and stay balanced on it. He felt kingly indeed as, with a little unobtrusive steering and provision of directions from the pillion, Vila got back to the palazzo.

"Stay with me, after," Vila said. "Jenna'll let you in. I should be finished by eleven or midnight, but wait for me if it's later." Simonetta nodded, kissed him at delicious length, then hopped back onto the bike and rode home.

Even with the sheets removed from the furniture, the grand salon had an air of melancholy and dilapidation. Marble busts with twisted Mannerist necks lurked at the top of the bookcases. Architraval ravens could probably have been obtained as an extra-cost option.

Blake and Avon each sat on a very large sofa covered in rubbed and raveled brocade. An inadequate lamp casting long and terrifying shadows. They were playing backgammon, on a marble-topped table that was far too low for the purpose.

Vila was surprised to see Avon's look of determination and purpose as he made his move, and how anxious Blake looked as he waited for his own turn, with one well-nibbled knuckle between his teeth. There didn't seem to be any money on the table, or even matchsticks, they must be playing for IOUs.

"Shesh-besh!" Vila said happily. "Haven't thought about that for ages. Can I play?"

"NO!" Blake and Avon chorused. "Err, we'll be retiring as soon as we finish this game," Blake said, in a more conciliatory tone. "I think Jenna knows how to play. She might give you a game when we're done."

"Oh, is she back? I thought she was having dinner with that bloke who knew the bloke and I didn't expect dinner to be over much before teatime tomorrow."

Blake felt a pinch of guilt. Well, it's not exactly like leaving Cally on Centero, he thought. But damned if I hadn't lost track of where Jenna is.

8\. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY

"Nondescript" was the most flattering term Jenna could come up with. There was nothing deformed or particularly displeasing about Henry Linville's appearance, but there was nothing exceptional about it either. He had nice gray eyes. His light brown hair was thinning. It was obvious what he had on his mind, and that was certainly refreshing after long months of Byzantine schemes and barbed double meanings.

Blake, Jenna thought, this must prove that I've admitted defeat at last. It's not your direction that I don't approve of. It's your taste.

It had been a long time since her last encounter, and she more or less enjoyed this one. It was with someone she didn't care about at all, so it couldn't be like making love with Blake. The ice-burn of expertise that she imagined from Avon wasn't on offer either. (She didn't think of Vila or Gan in this connection at all--but then, both of them would have described her as "a real lady" and none of them had ever read "Lady Chatterly's Lover.")

Early in the morning, Linville woke her up. She didn't really expect a breakfast tray with a rose on it, but she thought that it was inappropriate for him to stand next to the bed holding a "Wanted" poster.

"You're from the Blake Gang," Linville said. "The reward for all of you is--well, depends on who falls into the net and whether they're breathing. But today's your lucky day. I'll let you off the hook for four million credits."

He studied Jenna's face. "You wouldn't have the stomach to kill me," Linville said. "Contact your mob and let them know what's what and what they have to do to make me happy."

Jenna weighed up the various and unappealing alternatives. Well, this might work, she thought. And it's no more than he deserves. And if Cally will just give me a discreet bit of assistance, then the whole thing will be forgotten in a day or so.

"I've no weapons," Jenna lied. "I'll have to get my communicator--it's somewhere in that pile of clothing. California Jim--we call him Cally for short--is our banker. He's got all the money and can handle the transfers." Jenna activated the frequency that indicated a communication under duress. "Cally," she said, "Get over to the teleport bay. I'll explain later, just do as I say. Transfer four million credits from our account at the Vargas Bank. Immediate transmission and re-send, to the coordinates I will now specify."

"That's done, you bastard," she said, and launched herself toward him. He laughed at the inadequacy of her attempt to scratch his face. Then he stopped laughing, as she landed a very adequate knee right between his legs. He would have crumpled down to the ground, if it weren't for the strong hand that clasped his arm just long enough to snap on a teleport bracelet.

Cally was just glad that Gan stayed on the flight deck when she ran to comply with Jenna's SOS. (He was busy knitting himself a guernsey. The post-Nwallian craze for hand-knitting still held the crewmen in sway, although Cally and Jenna both thought it was a fiddly waste of time.)

Otherwise it might have been too difficult to explain why a crouching naked man, near-hysterical with fury, made a momentary appearance in the teleport bay and immediately afterward was hurled into the middle of the weekly sheep market on a rather primitive asteroid.

It was no inconvenience for Cally to be in the teleport bay anyway. She had one object for teleport. (Unaccompanied objects are teleported by wrapping them in tape and securing the bracelet to the tape.) It was an oil portrait of Blake, framed in glued-on bits of smashed recycled bracelets.

"Thanks for helping out," is all Jenna said to Cally when they had a moment alone. "I'll do you a favor to make up if I can. He was the wrong man, is all."

 

9\. I CONFESS

There was obviously something shady about Van Damme, although you would probably guess that it was in the criminous line rather than the behind-the-scenes, geopolitical, Gray Eminence sort of thing. That really was his name, although if it hadn't been he might have adopted it as an alias out of a mordant sense of humor.

He wasn't at all pleased that Simonetta knew he was the Jesuit Provincial for Roovyera and the three planets next door, since hardly anybody was supposed to know that. That's the nature of secrets--they leak. Still, he was glad enough of her offer. He didn't believe she could follow through, but he was willing to commit to being in the nondescript office that was supposed to import and export something very dull, on the relevant morning. He had planned to be in the office anyway.

On the way out the door, Simonetta thought that she should have asked him to hear her confession. But there was something so forbidding about him, so cold and austere. Not at all like jolly, rotund little Father Bruno. And, at any rate, you can't confess something you haven't done yet. Well, you can confess a sinful intent, but even so you still have to go back and confess the consummated sin. Which casts a retrospective bad light on the sincerity of your repentance the first time around.

Like Monsignor Van Damme, the nondescript building was recognized only by those already in the know. There was no sign out front, far less a cross on the roof. There was a prominently mounted surveillance camera over the front door. Although the lace mantilla folded in her coat pocket could afford no protection against the camera, Simonetta nonetheless waited to put it on until she was through the door, just before she dipped her fingers into the font.

There was someone already in the church, which was surprising. Usually hardly anybody came except during the twice-a-week Masses (and few even then).

She was surprised to recognize Avon, and startled to see that he had dimples. Well I don't suppose he'd smile like that when he means to show anyone how awfully tough he is, she thought. Or when he means you to hear the wingbeats of his dark angel.

"I'm not here if you're not here, and I won't tell if you won't," Avon said. Simonetta nodded. They knelt companionably, one on each side of the aisle.

My Lord and my God, Avon prayed, if all this is down to you, then I thank you. If it isn't, be kind enough to pass the word. Oh, this nonsense with the icon. Well, I can't be persuaded that it has much if anything to do with You. Sheer paganism is more like it. And as for stealing things, I do that all the time, so take it or leave it.

I can't burden the good Father with this, Simonetta prayed. He'd make me go through all the channels, follow all the steps, and that wouldn't work. Or he'd tell me not to, but it would tear his soul. So You must forgive me for doing what we know has to be done, in this way.

10\. TOPAZE

Vila, sober as a judge (perhaps that should be rephrased: entirely sober) flexed his fingers and lined up his shot. It took some doing to find a low dive with a snooker table, but once he settled into his favorite form of warm-up, he felt as relaxed and at his ease as anybody about to break into a Federation stronghold could be. He took a long pull from the alarming-looking fluid in his glass (blood orange juice).

Right, he thought. Win one more game--when they saw me order a glass of fruit juice, they all lined up to get my money off me, wish I'd thought of that before, go back to the Palazzo for my tools, and then...well, you know. (He devoutly believed that using phrases like "break-in" and "theft," even in his thoughts, was even worse luck than saying "Macbeth.")

"Awfully nice meeting you chaps," he said, folding a wad of shabby bright-colored paper into his pocket. "Have to do it again someday." He had just opened the door, blinking at the contrast between the dropping sun and Low Dive lighting, when three large and ill-disposed fellows (one per arm, the last with a hamlike hand on each of Vila's feet) dragged him back into the room, past the bar, through the kitchen, and onto the desk in the manager's office.

Oh, well, Vila thought. They'll take back that money from the snooker. They'll tell me they don't like hustlers and dump me out the back door. Nothing to worry about.

They threw him, from enough of a height to make a thump, onto the manager's desk and its raft of papers (mostly unpaid bills). The rings of an opened business checkbook dug into his spine.

"Drink up," said the tall, stocky woman emerging from the shadows. She had long, thin fingers--like breadsticks--with chipped nail varnish and a knuckle-duster sized semiprecious ring on her right hand.

A familiar smell drifted into Vila's nostrils. A well-filled beaker, gleaming green in the comparative darkness (pierced only by a bulb swinging from a cord) was shoved under his nose.

"Adrenaline and soma? Thank you, but I never touch the stuff. Well, if that's all you wanted, I'll just be off."

"At least you can die happy," she said (slurring a little bit on the "s" in "least").

"You lot planning to stick around for sixty more years?"

"You see, we know who you are, Restal," she said, as one thug held his head up, another squeezed his jaw, and the third poured the drink down his throat. They refilled the beaker and repeated the process. "Someone--well, someone you think is your friend--tipped us off. You cut up for a bit more if you're alive, but we've decided to take the prudent approach and collect the price on your head after your accident."

"Accident? I can't have an accident."

"That can happen to anyone, Restal. Even you." She signaled, and one of the thugs opened the back door and the other two hauled a deadweight of Vila out the back. One of them kick-started a motorbike. The second dumped Vila onto it face-first. The third fished the wad of banknotes out of his pocket. (Roovyera, though not a sophisticated place, had grasped the concept of the assembly line.)

That wasn't more than three or four doubles, Vila thought. Practically Hair of the Dog. Just swing my feet down--catch the footstand part--sit up--urrgh--oh bloody hell--(he and the motorbike clattered to separate stops). I'm face-down on the ground, eh? Good time to take that bracelet out of my boot, might be a problem otherwise, y'know, when that put-put thing is going.

"Jenna," he whispered urgently. "'S me. They told me to have a little accident, but I'm not going to. Listen, do me a favor, get my toolcase and stand in front of the house, OK? I'll swing by and pick it up. Anybody follows me, kill 'em. Oh, and keep the comm channel open in case I get lost. And don't tell the others!"

He almost fell off twice, and stopped to call Jenna for directions three times, but he got to the Palazzo, grabbed the tool kit, quickly conferred about directions to the Embassy, and got almost all the way there before the motorbike ran out of gas. That's fine, he thought. I'm not supposed to have this thing anyway, am I? He grabbed the toolcase and strolled (he thought; most people would say lurched) the last hundred yards.

"You're late," Avon said quietly, with the air of a man who had been saying this (out loud or otherwise), for most of his life, to almost everyone he had ever met.

"You're drunk!" Blake said. Dammit, even though this job was a doddle, a right piece of piss, there was no excuse for getting pissed beforehand.

"Not my fault, honessly it int," Vila said.

"Just get on with it," the lovers said, united for once.

11\. ROPE

It is a common human failing to rely on computers directly proportionate to the cost of the computer and the difficulties involved in setting it up. Since the Federation was a government, it paid a lot for its computers (you should see what it paid for its hammers and toilet seats). And since it was a corrupt and tyrannical one all the contractors were somebody's idiot brother-in-law, and getting fired was far from the worst thing that happened to anyone who dared to speak up.

Implementation was a nightmare. The specs were made up by the department heads, who distrusted their IT departments. It only took one Kerr Avon to make every manager in the Federation suspicious of everyone.

What with one thing and another, at the intersection of expense and angst, the Federation embassy in Roovyera had more faith in its computer system than Romeo did in Juliet. And it did them just about as much good. With their supercomputer handling security, they didn't see the need to post any very conspicuous number of blokes with guns around the place.

And given the wretched quality of the computer's own protection against invasion, Avon had hardly had to break a sweat to arrange to cripple it at the relevant moment. In fact, the whole mission seemed frivolous to him. It was like getting paid to eat artichokes and screw. Well, assuming that any of them got paid.

Avon was quite sure that the alarm systems would be inoperable, starting four hours before the scheduled break-in, ending four hours after its scheduled completion. But in the spirit of fairness, he agreed to accompany Blake and Vila to take care of the guards, and anyone else who turned up just in case the alarm system achieved spontaneous regeneration.

The most direct approach to the embassy strongroom was through the skylight. The theoretical connection between skylight and security computer kept the guards comfortably patrolling downstairs. (Vila's reconnaissance established that there were only four of them on the first and second shifts, three on the night shift--it's true that the night was the most likely time for a hostile intrusion, but nobody wanted to work the late shift.)

Thanks to the perfect security putatively provided by the supercomputer, the Federation Embassy could be in a dignified old building surrounded by trees. Trees, say that could be climbed by Blake, who could immobilize one-third of the guards with a tranquilizer dart.

Vila could climb onto the massive stone sill of the ground-floor window from the ground. He couldn't do all that and carry a toolbox, of course, so only a few selected objects were slung around his neck or stowed in a toolbelt and fly fisherman's vest.

Stretching hard, he could just about pull himself up to the triangular top of the heavy stone frame, which allowed him to reach the mezzanine balcony. He carefully turned his back to avoid looking down, and rested for a moment on the balcony. Standing on the balcony, he found plenty of handholds and footholds on the massively rusticated masonry.

Avon found the second guard patrolling the perimeter. A punch in the jaw knocked the guard down; a pair of plastic handcuffs, and being tipped over the low garden wall to the neighboring property, took him out of the action for the next few hours.

Getting the front door open wasn't a specialist's job, so Avon could manage it perfectly well as Vila completed the climb upward to the roof of the three-storey building. Getting the door open attracted the attention of the third guard. Avon went back to the tree, for the shrouded package Blake stashed there before climbing. Blake felt like something a little different, so he used the Stun magazine on the last of the guards. He and Avon rolled the limp body down the three broad limestone steps, walked through the door, and locked and barred it.

12A. FRENZY

There was a faint chime of broken glass, as Vila fastened his climbing harness and sawed out enough of the skylight to enter.   
Vila dropped through the breach in the skylight like Peter Pan (although flown on a less concealed apparatus). Alarms? No, no alarms, he thought. Guards? Probably taken care of. Avon might bottle out if you expected him to kill someone, Vila thought, but tell him to go kick someone in the goolies and you could check one item off your list. Consider it done.

Once his feet were on the floor, he unclipped the harness and moved the uncreative oil painting uncreatively placed over the door to the strongroom. It was a decentish lock, so it took forty-five minutes of concentrated attention to get it open. Well, it would have taken twenty minutes anyway--or half an hour if Vila had been allowed to set his own adrenaline-and-soma levels.

"I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to getting back," Blake whispered as he and Avon waited in the Reception area for Vila to open the strongroom. "Considering that the most noticeable thing I feel after action is mad randy, and this is the first time I'll get to do something about it. Well, something really worthwhile. I always scheduled the debriefing for half an hour after we got back, so I could go off and have a wank, but it never seemed to be quite enough. Don't know about the girls, but I assumed that's what you and Vila and Gan were doing."

"Of course not," Avon said. "Half an hour? Not enough time to do it justice, after having a shower--a cold one!--changing clothes and making notes for the debriefing. Oh, and getting a sandwich or a piece of cake if there was one going. What I could never wait for was the next meal."

"This time round, all the weapons are set for Stun or Hypno," Blake said, "So we won't have to feel guilty that we're glad to be alive when some other bugger isn't. And this time I'll let you get up the steps. Up the steps into the house and up the steps to the bedroom! But after that you're only getting one choice--whether to be thrown against the wall or on the bed."

Avon closed his eyes and enjoyed the pulse beating in his throat. "Neapolitan?" he suggested. "A bit of each?" Refinement was all very well in its place, but sometimes, well, it just wasn't a party until there was a faint smell of burning coming from the underwear hanging from the chandelier, and the furniture had sustained some casualties.

Their bracelets crackled. "Blake? Avon? Come on up, it's done."  
They ran up the stairs, the package cradled in Avon's arms (he almost felt a pang at letting it go). It took less than a minute to swap one bundle for the other.

Well, it was the Embassy strongroom, wasn't it? "Maybe they won't look if we make it look like a regular--uhh, thing, job, what have you," Vila said. So Blake took some documents, and Vila took some jewelry that he thought of as a pourboire, and Avon took some banknotes that he considered an incentive bonus. They closed and re-locked the door, put the oil painting back in place, and walked out the back door of the Embassy.

Jenna opened a bottle of champagne. She, Simonetta, Vila, and Avon stood in a half-circle in front of their own safe as Blake unwrapped the cloth-of-gold covering from Our Lady of Roovyera.   
Simonetta crossed herself. (Avon realized that he had too, but he was closest to the safe with his back to the others, so he didn't think anyone had noticed.) "A triumph," Blake said. The two couples realized that Jenna didn't have anybody to kiss, so they didn't.

Jenna yawned for the record. "Long day, and I didn't get much sleep last night. I think I'll turn in."

As it happened the furniture survived Blake and Avon's victory celebration. The bed proved surprisingly resilient despite its decrepit appearance (camouflage?). However, the ancient crisp-starched bottom sheet ripped in three places, and they didn't have any more clean sheets, and the wet spot covered most of the valley in the middle of the bed, so they both rolled onto it and slept, exhausted and experiencing the sudden withdrawal of adrenaline.

At about three, Avon half-woke, wondering if there were anything to eat in the kitchen. He rather doubted it, and didn't want to retrace the gloom of those endless passages. He heard the snick of the front door being closed gently, followed by the cough of a motorbike. He concluded that Simonetta had exhausted Vila's charms, such as they were. Or her brother expected her home by dawn.

12B TO CATCH A THIEF

Flashback...

Vila and Simonetta stood on the palazzo's balcony. If they craned their necks, they could just see the fireworks display that marked the transition from the end of the ceremonies and the beginning of the celebrations. They could just about hear the brass band, the hiss of the ascending pyrotechnics, the bang as they detonated.

How do I know if she wants me to kiss her? Vila wondered. First it was the scrubbers in the Domes, they'd go with anybody, then it was trying not to end up as everybody's in Resoc, then it was mostly tarts, if he was going to be honest about it. Really, he wouldn't know a nice girl if he fell on one, although he was fairly sure that that wasn't the appropriate opening move. There was no time to ask Avon, and anyway he'd probably say "Argue with her for a year, that'll send her mad, it worked for Blake and me."

Simonetta rested her head on his shoulder, and slipped an arm around his waist. A multi-colored rocket in the display shot up and splashed into a riot of green and pink and red. "It's been a long night, and I don't particularly like the book I've started," she said.

He is so nice, Simonetta thought. Almost I am sorry for what I am soon to do. But if needs must when the Devil drives, how much more when the angels do?

12C TORN CURTAIN

Flashback...  
Ambassador Lulwisden was not gifted at thinking on his feet. So when he finished a very long, very boring speech about relations between the Mother Federation and its newest colony--err, member of the Commonwealth, and swept aside the cloth-of-gold veil from the easel, he did not have prepared remarks for dedicating a portrait of Blake.

The viscasts caught his expression of sublime pop-eyed dismay, the strangulated gargle in his voice and the apoplectic purple of his face. But his reflex action, dropping the corner of the cloth as if it had been a superheated scorpion, at least guaranteed that the camera operators behind him saw nothing subversive, and even those in front of him captured only a few frames that could easily be edited out.

13\. QUE SERA, SERA

Vila awoke luxuriantly, and reached out a hand for Simonetta. When his hand encountered nothing, he looked around the room. Not there. She's so sweet, he thought. Probably poking around in that hellhole of a kitchen trying to make us some breakfast. Vila pulled on pants and shirt and decided that shoes and trousers were surplus to requirements (a mistake, given the state of the palazzo's floors). Simonetta was not in the kitchen and in any event there were no remaining supplies for making breakfast.

"Caro:" Simonetta's note read, "I hope you do not mind too much. For some, this is most important, and more important than money-valuable. I think they should have it."

The note was held (by a small magnet) to the door of the safe. The inside of the door. The safe was open, of course. And empty.

**Author's Note:**

> The Roovyera setting comes from "The Talented Mr. Ripley," and the section headings are, of course, the names of Alfred Hitchcock movies; this isn't a million miles away from a fusion of "To Catch A Thief," either.


End file.
